Module 2: Reading Reflection

Reading Reflection Prompt:  After reading Chapters 3 and 4, return to the quote from Harper and Kilarr on p. 41. Respond to this quote on your blog, saying whether you agree or disagree and explain why or why not using ample evidence from the text to support your assertions.

I agree with Harper and Kilarr’s quote about reading instruction and how it isn’t an exact process.  I do not believe a reader must read every word in a passage or story correctly in order to gain meaning from the text.  I found the explanation of cloze test of pages 42 and 43 helpful.  Weaver stated that a reader would only need about four-fifths of the words present in a passage to develop an understanding of the text.  This proves how a reader uses syntactic and semantic context in passages containing unfamiliar words to still gain appropriate meaning.  I also found the information Weaver provided in chapter three about how a reader’s schema contributes to identifying and misidentifying words very interesting.  The example, on page 48, using the word “encyclopedia” illustrated this well.  It was interesting to see how a fourth-grade student correctly read the word within a sentence with the typical meaning of encyclopedia, but wasn’t sure how to pronounce the word when it was used as a name.  However, the student was recognizing the word was used in a different context even though he was unsure of the pronunciation.  Therefore, the meaning of the text wasn’t lost.

I was especially intrigued when Weaver’s text made me think about the sight word lists I’ve used in the past.  I guess I’ve never thought about how much beginning readers relied on context, and how reading isolated words might be somewhat awkward.  All the more experienced teachers I work with use sight word lists to assess the students, so I do too, but now I’m questioning that method.  In the past it made sense to me to learn a list of words and then you would be able to recognize those words in sentences, which would lead to reading passages more fluently.  However, it actually does make more sense to use the sight words in phrases or sentences, especially in the primary grades.  Before we left for summer break my team did discuss using Fry Phrases next year, so I am looking forward to implementing those after reading this chapter.    

Through various reading strategies readers learn new words, their meanings, and begin to understand challenging texts.  It’s not whether they read with 100% accuracy or a certain number of words per minute that’s most important, but whether they understand what they are reading and comprehend the text to the point of being able to discuss it with others.  This is something I have brought to my classroom parents’ attention when they would be upset that their straight “A” child had a low fluency score.  I’ve had children in my classroom who read at a slower rate than average and/or would miss a few words, but could accurately answer questions and discuss the text.  I believe this goes along with the point Harper and Kilarr were making in their quote.